No Other Entity

"There is no other entity on the planet that is Google," - Bob Huggins, the founder of Paper of Record

I know, I KNOW information is a commodity and that people who work to create it or organize it or make it accessible should be able to get paid for that. I realize that sort of work is the sort of thing that I, personally, and hoping to get paid a fair salary to do. So why does this article from Inside Higher Ed about Google shutting down access to a database that they paid for, fair and square, give me the willies? I can’t even really say. As I was reading it, I was self-talking myself through it -- mentally nodding and affirming – and I did fine until the end line that I quoted above. I think it’s scary to me to consider how much I rely on Google, and the greater Google Digital Empire they are building/acquiring. Empire-building makes me uncomfortable, even if everything goes OK; you are reading this on a Google product, even. The fact that this acquisition resulted in a loss of access to information that is essential to our neighbor, Mexico, well it just seems really un-neighborly to me, at least.

I think it was Gretchen who talked, one night in class, about how Google isn’t this plucky little underdog anymore, though people (including me, sometimes) forget that they aren’t. They seem fairly benevolent most of the time, but they are undeniably powerful, and they have a huge financial interest in what they do. Power + the potential for gain = trouble for regular folks, most of the time. Libraries are so important because they can protect information, somewhat, from a system of financial interests.

Another Big Brother

This story about counter-terrorism measures in the UK makes my stomach hurt, and not just because I’m a mother. Could you imagine being a school media specialist in a community with a program like this one? In the name of fighting terrorism (everyone knows it’s the new communism), children are turned over to the feds by their teachers and school administrators. When my brother was a teenager, my mom had to go talk to the guidance counselor at his school because he was drawing skulls on his notebooks. The counselor didn’t recognize that skulls and such were part of the skater culture with which my brother identified, but thought that the skulls meant that he was suicidal. If he was a kid in England today, would his teacher have skipped his mother and gone straight to the police? I’m not sure that I have the words to say how wrong this feels to me. School is supposed to be a place where children can learn and explore. The UK’s current wave of anti-terrorism measures include encouraging people to go through their neighbor’s garbage, ratting on people for looking for too long at the security cameras that are set up at bus stops and the like, and now turning in children who have aroused the hair-triggered suspicion of some under-trained, over-empowered person. There is no reason to think that this couldn’t happen here. National Security Letters to libraries and wiretaps on citizen’s phones are considered perfectly legitimate security measures. It’s only a very short leap to the kind of campaign being waged across the Atlantic.

Access vs. Ownership

I am not the least bit interested in paying for an ebook reader, or for ebooks, but I did download the free Kindle app for my phone last week, along with one of the free public domain books that are available form Amazon. It’s nice to have a book in my pocketbook, but only as a pinch-hitter. I have been thinking about ebooks and readers a lot lately, so it was interesting to see this article from the Christian Science Monitor about what we lose when we choose the electronic version of a book over the paper one. The author feels that we trade ownership for access, when we make that choice, and that access is far inferior to ownership. I am not sure that I feel so strongly about that, as a principle, though. After all, I am not making just that choice every time I borrow a book from the library, instead of buying it? The difference is, of course, that in the case of the Kindle, the access isn’t free. It’s like paying $360 for a library card, and then paying another $10 or so for every book I borrow. Sure, I could read it over and over, for as long as the Kindle works, but I am not much of a re-reader. The truth is that someone is making a lot of money off our access. The author of the article invokes the golden light of 2.0, but I don’t think that we have fewer rights to edit and share the text we get digitally than what we have to edit and share what we pay for in print, do we? Am I missing something here?

Government Opacity

Maira Kalman did this beautiful thing on the inauguration in her monthly illustrated NY Times blog. In it, she wrote “ A woman named Renata asked ‘Why on the Bible? Why not on the Constitution?’ and I think that is a VERY good question. But now we are taking a short break from questioning. Right now, we are opting for naïvité.” That was true, then. It was all so good, that it seemed wise to savor the moment.

Now the savoring time is over, though, and it’s time for the questions. Why (oh why) are the details of an international agreement about intellectual property state secrets, the knowing of which would threaten National Security? Honestly? True story? It stinks like Bush, to me. Our president promised us transparency and he gives us this. As Wired author David Kravets points out, there are 27 nations involved in the negotiation of this treaty, so just how secret can it be? There are rumors that the content of the treaty are hardcore enforcement mandates, making iPods subject to border searches and criminalizing peer-to-peer file sharing, but for now those are just rumors. ALA Code of Ethics says that librarians respect intellectual property rights, but librarians also stand firmly on the side of access, and citizens are being denied access to the workings of their government. It makes a person start to wonder what terrible stuff really is contained in that treaty.

Sometimes, even people with really great intentions need help to stay on the path they chose. Maybe President Obama needs our help right now, to keep his commitment to transparency.

Pay for it Twice

or

What’s in it for Whom? (Which is one of my favorite questions ever)

or

Hey, This Has Nothing to do with Neil Gaiman!

I read this interesting article in Boing Boing that said that Rep. John Conyers has introduced legislation in Congress that would chip away at our right to access information. The bill would disallow government funding agencies from requiring that recipients of federal research grants make the results of their research freely accessible to the public. That means that you or I could pay for the research twice – once through our taxes, and once more to access the results of the research that our taxes funded. Currently, the law says that the information must be made freely accessible to the public within 12 months. This makes sense, since the public paid for the research in the first place.

Scientists don’t stand to gain from this legislation. They don’t get paid for their articles anyway. In fact, according to this article in the Financial Times, 33 Nobel Prize-winning scientists, research librarians, and patients’ rights advocates are all actively opposing the legislation, and the current and former heads of the NIH say that this legislation, if passed, would hurt the advancement of science. The folks who do stand to gain from a change like this one are members of the publishing industry, which is threatened by the rise in support in the scientific community for open access peer-reviewed journals. Also according to Larry Lessig, the bill’s co-sponsors in Congress receive twice as much financial support from publishing interests as their non-sponsoring colleagues. So that explains a lot.

More About Neil Gaiman

When the Youth Media Awards were announced at this year’s ALA Midwinter Meeting, I took the morning off work, set up my computer to see the webcast, logged on to Twitter, too, just to see how the two compared, time-wise, and logged in to my public library account so that I could put holds on all the books that sounded interesting. When my husband came home, he said something like “wow, this is like the Super Bowl for you, isn’t it?” Yea, it kind of was like the Super Bowl. When a team wins the Super Bowl, do you think that any of its members ever swear? I’ll bet they do, and so did Neil Gaiman, when he was told that he won the Newbery for his The Graveyard Book. He didn’t swear on the phone (as he did when he was told he won the Hugo, for SF) but he did swear in his Twitter feed. “F---!!!! I won the F---ING NEWBERY THIS IS SO F---ING AWESOME. I thank you” Sure, it was a little over the top, maybe, but at least he was happy to get it! Apparently, at ALA, some librarians were upset by his use of adult language. One of the blogs I follow is by Roger Sutton, long-time editor of the Horn Book magazine, which reviews children’s books. Roger Sutton doesn’t let his involvement in children’s publishing stop him from publishing grown-up thoughts and links to even more grown-up thoughts. It strikes me as gutsy for these people who work with children’s books to communicate as adults. I am glad that they do, because I’m afraid that if we ask of our children’s authors that they live lives that are always fit for children’s ears and eyes, then no one who’s the least bit interesting will ever want to write for children again. Swear on, people.

Oh great, check out all the different kinds of censorship

I’ve been thinking, for a few days, about this article in School Library Journal discussing the various issues to be considered when shelving Neil Gaiman’s 2009 Newbery winner, The Graveyard Book. It says that shelving it in YA, instead of in little kids, is censorship. One thing that I was thinking was that there’s a bit of a niftier-than-thou aspect to the intellectual freedom scene, and that I want to avoid that. Yes, IF is really important, and it’s really important to me in this sort of emotional way. Still, there is a reality in which we operate and in it, we need real food, not Neverland pretend food, as well as shelter and stuff. It’s easy for me to say that I would lose my job to fight for principles that are important, but how can I say whether I really really would? Then I saw this article tonight and it made me wonder: how can I really trust myself to not self-censor? (Totally not at the barricades now, friends.) I think that, if I am really intentional in my consideration process, I can trust that I’ll be honest with myself, but what about the times when I just dismiss a book as not being high quality? I could see those kinds of decisions getting muddy for me. I need a tool, either developed by someone else or by myownself, to help me through rocky collection development questions. Do any of you nice folks have any suggestions for a resource that makes a lot of sense to you?

Vamos

I saw this post about Vamos a Cuba last week in Roger Sutton’s blog. Since no one picked Vamos a Cuba as for the book reconsideration assignment, I’ll go ahead and comment about it here. It turns out that the court cases involving this book are still going on, and it is an interesting book for this class to consider when it comes to intellectual freedom.

I don’t know about you all, but when I think of intellectual freedom, I picture myself (at the barricades, of course) protecting the rights of innocent, intellectually curious children to read really excellent literature, or sex ed books that provide factual information. In my mind’s eye, there I am with a copy of some Really Important Book clutched to my bosom while some fascists try to grab it from me.

The case of Vamos a Cuba is a serious buzz-kill (aka Reality Check.) Apparently, this just isn’t a very good book. It’s part of a series of not-very-good-books. Turns out that we, as librarians, will have to defend kinda crappy books, too. Vamos a Cuba is a juvenile nonfiction series book about Cuba that isn’t particularly accurate, or well-written. Critics say that the inaccuracies are meant to cast a deceptively sunny hue on the realities of Castro’s Cuba. The debate is occurring in Miami, where everything Cuba is big big news to the Cuban expat community there.

It’s a political issue, and worthy of the attention of librarians, to be sure, but if I ever have to lose my job defending for defending my students’ freedom to read, I sure hope it’s over a book that I like. Silly, but true.

Post #2: Back to High School Government

So, I’ve been thinking about the recent smackdown that COPA received when the Supreme Court declined to review the case for it again. The District Court Judge, Lowell Reed, said “perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection,” which is an awesome expression of the bigger picture.

I’ve also been chewing on the reminders that I received in the Intellectual Freedom Manual about the relationship between democracy and majority and the Constitution and this is what I think: since COPA was passed by both the House and Senate, and signed by President Clinton, that would imply that this piece of legislation was supported by the people (as the legislative branch of government is supposed to represent) but struck down by the judicial branch (Defenders of the Constitution). Any high school student would probably yawn at this observation, but it occurs to me that this speaks directly to the issues I’ve been playing with lately. Librarians, in this case, supporting the decision of the judicial branch and opposing the assertions of the legislative, are in the position of opposing popular opinion (potentially) – sort of saving the populace from itself.

Now, we all know that it isn’t that simple. It’s not as though a national referendum was held on the issue of the Internet and the majority of Americans supported this particular iteration of the urge to protect their children. More likely, the oversimplified version of this solution: “we need to protect our children from porn” was what drew the support of a vocal minority, convincing a majority of legislators to support COPA. Still, it is interesting to me to see theory played out in the real world.

According to this article from the San Francisco Chronicle, Eric Holder, Obama's AG pick, supports the continuation of the Patriot Act provision that allows the FBI to enter a library, bookstore, or business, demand access to private patron records, then leave the staff with a directive to never speak of the incident again. It's sometimes called Section 215, and it is the sort of provision that makes privacy-loving librarians squirm. It should make all Americans squirm, since it compromises our Fourth Amendment rights to freedom from unnecessary search and seizure. Patrons don’t even need to be terrorism suspects to be victims of this kind of abuse. President Obama said in his inaugural address, just this afternoon, that the business of government needs to occur in the light of day, but permission for the FBI to execute a search of patron records is granted in a secret court. Transparency isn’t just for finance. When National Security Letters are issued and gags orders invoked, our own government becomes the terrorist. We deserve better. Holder says that he’s willing to reexamine the issue, and I think that President Obama needs to hear from those of us who care. The ALA’s report to Obama’s transition team suggests amending of Section 215, but our new president needs to hear from his new constituents, too.

Personally, I knew the day would come when Obama stopped being my underdog candidate and became the president who wasn’t doing just what I want him to do, but I guess that day’s come a bit earlier than I’d anticipated, though not as early as it did for these folks. *sigh*

Here's some ALA Information about privacy.

Well, it's a new semester, so I have a new course for which to blog. It's about intellectual freedom, which is a topic about which I feel really strongly. In fact, it's part of the reason why I wanted to be a librarian in the first place. I know that the ALA disappoints people, and I understand why, but as far as a professional organization goes, it's really a very cool one. I have a friend who, as far as I can tell, decided to be a mom after reading Mothering magazine. She was rather young and she had read the magazine at work and the issues really resonated in her, so she decided to become a mother, do some Mothering herownself. Me deciding to become a librarian isn't really all that different, if you think about it.

Anyway, I am really excited about my new class and I'll be blogging every week or two for the ret of the semester.